Capitalism has a peculiar trait: the price of everything except assets tends to fall. Take computers, for instance—devices once powerful enough to send men to the moon are now held in everyone’s hands as smartphones, costing less than a million won. It’s an astonishing achievement, but as the price of goods falls, so too does the price of life.
If we look at a news article from 2013, the average starting salary at Korea’s top 1,000 companies was 33.52 million won. And in 2024, eleven years later? The increase is almost negligible. The average salary has only crept up to the low 40-million won range, and in the case of public institutions, it remains around 34 million won at best. In many cases, it's under 30 million. Even after a decade, wage growth lags far behind inflation.
This isn’t just a recent trend. A look into the history of capitalism in the world's most powerful nation—America—makes this clear. In the 1960s, a single male earner could support a family of four, buy a two-story house within a decade, and drive a mid-sized Ford. But by the 1980s, one income was no longer enough. Women were pushed into the labor market, and since then, things have only worsened. Supporting a family has become a struggle for both parents.
Meanwhile, repeated financial bubbles emerged, fueled by the illusion that “money makes money.” The financial sector made enormous profits, and the losses? They were covered by taxpayer money.
Moral hazard isn’t limited to Wall Street. It’s rampant across industries. In a capitalist market, survival demands cheaper, better products. This relentless race to the bottom means lower prices for goods—but also a brutal underpricing of labor. Everyone is forced to compete for crumbs.
Naturally, expensive human labor is constantly being replaced by cheaper alternatives—machines, algorithms, automation. In the process, the value of human life and labor steadily erodes.
If we compare salaries between 2013 and 2024, which sector saw the greatest rise? Unsurprisingly, it's finance. Finance alone remains fattened while the value of all other labor steadily collapses. What does this imply? In a system that covers debt with more debt, those without assets are left with only one role: slaves to money, to taxes, to debt.
We earn wages to repay debts, to pay taxes. Yet we have no idea where that money goes or how it’s used.
We are living through a widening wealth gap, pushing more and more people to either extreme. Sometimes the well-fed speak as if they’ve achieved “financial freedom.” But the truth is, they too are just better-fed prisoners of capital. Nothing changes the fact that they remain slaves to money.
So how do we escape this terrifying cycle?
Perhaps humanity has yet to find the answer.
And yet, a part of me wants to see where this society, built on exploitation, ultimately ends up.